Hello PHers and welcome to your new look forums!

[ClockworkCupcake]

dmsims said:

What was the crushing pressure to https the skin?

Given the https request thread has been running for well over a year, I'm not sure "crushing pressure" is a phrase that really applies here.

Having said that, there does seem to have been rather a dearth of beta testing. Or indeed any testing.

dmsims said:

Would 2 weeks to actually sort out the howlers instead of inflicting a half baked effort been a better strategy? (that's rhetorical)

The irony is that the GTI skin has been around a while and, according to the PH Team, 99.8% of users were happily using it.

The detailed bug reports about GTI on this thread and others suggests that this may not have been the case.

Edited by ClockworkCupcake on Monday 10th April 11:02

[Fastdruid]

ClockworkCupcake said:

The slightly clunky homebrew nature of the GS was always part of its charm, especially the complete lack of avatars and signatures. A commercial OTS package would run the risk of making it look like just another generic forum which would be a shame.

Having said that, what we have right now isn't exactly ideal either.

But all that kind of stuff is modifiable. You can choose if to have avatars and/or signatures.

As long as you pick a suitably modifiable base, then once you are running on something supported (either paid or free) you can make it functionally identical while retaining the supportability and ease of upgrades.

Edited by Fastdruid on Monday 10th April 11:08

[TooMany2cvs]

dmsims said:

What was the crushing pressure to https the skin?

Perhaps you missed the rather large thread complaining of lack of HTTPS?

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

In addition, I've noticed that (presumable due to recent browser updates) Firefox, and probably other browsers, has started whinging and making logging in over HTTP much more visible. A good thing, but it'd certainly increase pressure on the dev team.

Ah - here y'go...
https://medium.servertastic.com/google-confirm-chr...

Hopefully, moving to a single skin means that they can start to separate display from function, as it should always have been, and this is the first step to actually getting something approaching sensible... Think of it as closing a couple of lanes so they can start the roadworks.

[Tankrizzo]

zarjaz1991 said:

Love the various people saying "just move all the posts to new forum software, not much work, just map one table in the database to another in the new database, a few us in here can help".

Yeah right. Anyone ever done any work on that sort of thing with the sort of massive database PH has? Best of British!

And if you think this thread is a ststorm, let's pretend everything DID get moved to new software, with the resultant loss of various functions custom coded into the current platform, let alone the entirely different look and feel.....there would be a thread many times bigger than this one within minutes.

Still, it's always quaint how people with no commercial IT experience tend to think everything is just a matter of pressing a few buttons.....

And as for "start again and delete all the posts"....seriously?? I don't even know where to start with that.

Honestly...speaking from experience...those who don't know what they're talking about should stick to actually pointing out what doesn't work / what they don't like, and quit trying to come up with grand plans to fix everything.

It's be a bit like me deciding to tell people on here who are restoring / rebuilding cars that they're doing it all wrong. I would be clueless....so I don't!

I have a vast amount of commercial IT experience including my current job, so quite politely you can do one. Of course it's possible if it's resourced properly.

Forum migrations happen all the time, it's not like this is some magical new concept which has never been tried before.

[dmsims]

No I didn't and that was a separate issue which was a separate tranche of work released separately

TooMany2cvs said:

dmsims said:

What was the crushing pressure to https the skin?

Perhaps you missed the rather large thread complaining of lack of HTTPS?

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

In addition, I've noticed that (presumable due to recent browser updates) Firefox, and probably other browsers, has started whinging and making logging in over HTTP much more visible. A good thing, but it'd certainly increase pressure on the dev team.

Hopefully, moving to a single skin means that they can start to separate display from function, as it should always have been, and this is the first step to actually getting something approaching sensible... Think of it as closing a couple of lanes so they can start the roadworks.

[rscott]

dmsims said:

No I didn't and that was a separate issue which was a separate tranche of work released separately

TooMany2cvs said:

dmsims said:

What was the crushing pressure to https the skin?

Perhaps you missed the rather large thread complaining of lack of HTTPS?

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

In addition, I've noticed that (presumable due to recent browser updates) Firefox, and probably other browsers, has started whinging and making logging in over HTTP much more visible. A good thing, but it'd certainly increase pressure on the dev team.

Hopefully, moving to a single skin means that they can start to separate display from function, as it should always have been, and this is the first step to actually getting something approaching sensible... Think of it as closing a couple of lanes so they can start the roadworks.

No - https on the login/account pages was released as the initial tranche of updates. The second step - making the entire site https - meant they took the decision to move to a single skin as the current code base seems to be horrendous to maintain (as they'd maintain multiple copies of every single page).

[dmsims]

So back to the original question then ........................

[robinessex]

Not an I.T. guy at all, but. If a new Forum was created from scratch, could existing postings simple be made as TXT files, and up loaded to recreate what we already have, but new. And don't forget a BLOODY SEARCH function that works. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

[rscott]

dmsims said:

So back to the original question then ........................

Read the massive thread about https - that explains it.

[Lefty]

I hadn't seen there was a thread already about the whole site update.

I just asked in a separate thread how to view the desktop site on my mobile? There used to be an option but i'm buggered if i can find it now and i'm not a fan of the mobile site.

[xjay1337]

Lefty said:

I hadn't seen there was a thread already about the whole site update.

I just asked in a separate thread how to view the desktop site on my mobile? There used to be an option but i'm buggered if i can find it now and i'm not a fan of the mobile site.

The PH development team took the executive decision to remove it.

[Rawwr]

xjay1337 said:

The PH development team took the executive decision to remove it.

Starting to think the PH team had a hand in the development of the iPhone 7.

[Lefty]

xjay1337 said:

Lefty said:

I hadn't seen there was a thread already about the whole site update.

I just asked in a separate thread how to view the desktop site on my mobile? There used to be an option but i'm buggered if i can find it now and i'm not a fan of the mobile site.

The PH development team took the executive decision to remove it.

Really? FFS, Oh well my PH usage is going to diminish rapidly.

Drivetribe is a bit weird (great to read and watch, crap to contribute), hopefully blatters will pick up a bit.

[B'stard Child]

ClockworkCupcake said:

dmsims said:

Would 2 weeks to actually sort out the howlers instead of inflicting a half baked effort been a better strategy? (that's rhetorical)

The irony is that the GTI skin has been around a while and, according to the PH Team, 99.8% of users were happily using it.

The detailed bug reports about GTI on this thread and others suggests that this may not have been the case.

That's the thing that I think the PH team haven't got a handle on they can claim 0.2% took the switch back option but that's not really a great measure

99.8% of users didn't know any different - GTI has been the default when you signed up to the Forum for quite a long time.

The 0.2% of the users that were forced to switch already were using a skin which was far less buggy and gave a cleaner view with better visual appearance of read and unread threads as well as other viewing options not available in GTI

Then throw in the users who were using GTI but on a mobile with the desktop version and are unhappy now that option is not available and you get a bit more than 0.2%

[Silverbullet767]

I imagine that 0.2% figure would be much different if they sampled ACTIVE users who had been force changed from Classic or Big Blue to GTI then manually changed back to their original skin.

0.2% smacks of all users, active or not.

[B'stard Child]

Silverbullet767 said:

I imagine that 0.2% figure would be much different if they sampled ACTIVE users who had been force changed from Classic or Big Blue to GTI then manually changed back to their original skin.

0.2% smacks of all users, active or not.

Probably - I guess we are never going to get those numbers to know for sure.

What would be nice "Jack Mansfield" is (considering this is being promoted by you as the "GoTo" thread for issues with the forum skin) if you had a list of action points that you have taken from this thread and to share if they are going to be considered for implementation or not.

I'd even go so far as to suggest you updated the first post of this thread with the plan - as it would probably be quite lost in the middle of the 18 page thread it's currently reached.

We are of course still quite a way off requiring a "vol 2" version

[rscott]

Jack - could you ask for an explanation why the decision was taken to remove the option to view the desktop version on a mobile?

If that returned, it'd satisfy quite a few complaints. Either that, or fix the 'request desktop version' on iPhones?

[Digger]

rscott said:

Jack - could you ask for an explanation why the decision was taken to remove the option to view the desktop version on a mobile?

If that returned, it'd satisfy quite a few complaints. Either that, or fix the 'request desktop version' on iPhones?

Removing the Desktop option for mobiles (Android in my case) is bonkers. Screens are plenty large enough these days!

[dmsims]

rscott said:

dmsims said:

So back to the original question then ........................

Read the massive thread about https - that explains it.

For the last time - no it doesn't

[rscott]

dmsims said:

rscott said:

dmsims said:

So back to the original question then ........................

Read the massive thread about https - that explains it.

For the last time - no it doesn't

They needed to move the entire site to https - it's simply good practice to do so nowadays. Lack of it can even harm Google search rankings.

Codebase is a mess which 'evolved' over years, resulting in, it seems, multiple versions of each page, all of which would have needed fixing for https to work properly. They cut the workload to about 1/3 by dropping the other skins, keeping only the responsive one.